In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln was torn: with the War Between the States raging, the clarion call to free the slaves was louder than ever. However, to do so, Lincoln feared a backlash from his own Union forces, who were more concentrated on the rebels then the abolitionists. In the end, the 16th President of the United States of America decided to take the higher moral ground, turning the crisis into a true war for liberty, and this culminated in what is now known as the Emancipation Proclamation.

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A few days ago, we wrote about the U.S. whooping cough outbreak -- which is the worst in 50 years.

Pertussis can prove deadly to infants and toddlers, but healthy adults aren't likely to succumb to this illness. (However, it's still a good idea to get a booster shot! Details here.)

Whooping cough cases have outright ballooned in Washington; state health authorities actually declared epidemic status earlier this year, there has been a 13-fold increase in diagnoses since 2011.

Washington -- though home to a lot of highly-educated, tech savvy people -- is also the epicenter of the U.S. anti-vaccination movement. Over the last few decades, more and more parents there have opted out of inoculating their kids against preventable illnesses. As some 90 percent of any population must be inoculated for vaccines to work -- AKA "herd immunity" -- many are blaming Washington's anti-vax camp for spurring the disease's spread.

Of course, this brings up some questions: What the hell is the anti-vax movement, anyway? Where does it come from and, perhaps most importantly, why don't people want to protect their kids?

To answer your queries, we've prepped a brief history...

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Our perch in the NY Senate when the Marriage Equality Act passed one year ago today

One year ago today, we had the chance to travel to Albany for our first and only day of reporting there.

As days of political reporting go, it did not disappoint. On arrival, the halls were filled with passionate protesters: those demanding that gay and lesbian people not be allowed to "sully" the tradition of marriage, and those demanding marriage equality. At times, both were using religious chants to drown each other out, their singing voices ringing off the marble capitol building's hall and echoing far away.

Over the long hours of the day, rumors abounded that there were more than the two declared Republican state senators to vote for the Marriage Equality Act. At least one was needed for it to pass.

Finally, we got word that a bill was being printed, even though we didn't know if the votes were there for it to pass. As press, we could be on the floor with the Senators, in the South gallery (with the Human Rights Campaign's paid seat fillers) or in the North gallery (with activists who'd gotten arrested demanding marriage equality, often to the chagrin of Gay Inc., like Ben Strothmann/Honey LaBronx, Natasha Dillon and Jake Goodman).

We chose to sit in the North gallery.

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Steven Thrasher

Front row L to R: Speaker Quinn, Stuart Appelbaum/RWDSU, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum/CBST, Sharon Stapel/AVP at podium; Ben Jealous/NAACP, Rev. Al Sharpton/NAN, Marty Rouse/HRC, George Gresham/SEIU

An historic coalition of traditional race-oriented civil rights organizations, labor unions, and LGBT groups met yesterday at the Stonewall Inn to endorse the upcoming SIlent March to End Stop and Frisk on Father's Day, June 17. The "press conference" featured an impressive roster of speakers -- including the Rev. Al Sharpton, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and NAACP President Benajmin Jealous -- and had anyone wanted to wipe out nearly every LGBT leader in the city, they could have done it with one strike.

But as historic as it was to see "Gay Inc" standing alongside black civil rights groups at the location where the Stonewall Riots kicked off the gay rights revolution four decades ago, there was one inconvenient truth which the event did not acknowledge. In fact, when the Voice even asked about this -- that the assembled were joined to fight a policy which belongs primarily to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is a very close ally of several of the speakers, particularly Speaker Quinn, and also the Human Rights Campaign, who honored Mayor Bloomberg last year -- it brought the "press conference" to a hasty end. (Like most events we cover, it was expected by organizers that the speakers would talk at us and we journalists would transcribe whatever they said and repeat it without question.)

Still, it was one of the most unusual events we've covered, and a hearteningly significant one at that.

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Eugene de Salignac, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures

From October 7, 1914. Brooklyn Bridge showing painters on suspenders.

Hundreds of thousands of photos that offer snapshots of more than a century of New York City history are now publicly available online for the first time ever.

Together, they offer a close-up, gritty picture of the city's history and development, from detective photos of gruesome crime scenes to Depression-era shots of everyday life to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

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Lincoln freed the slaves in Washington, D.C. on this date in 1862

Procrastinating taxpayers: wonder why you're getting a couple extra days to file your taxes this year?

April 15 fell on a Sunday this year, so you can thank a Christian for the first extra day, as politicians are so terrified of offending them, they've never liked to do government business on Sundays.

But if you want to know who to thank for Tax Day being tomorrow and not today, April 16, consider thanking Abraham Lincoln.

Or, more aptly, think of thanking one of the more than 3,000 slaves living in the District of Columbia 150 years ago in 1862.

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Today is day we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. in the United States, one of the single individuals to do the most of anyone in advancing the cause of civil rights in our nation during the twentieth century.

It's worth remembering King's time in New York -- specifically two events, which both relate to our list of "The 100 Most Powerless New Yorkers," on the cover of this week's Voice -- in considering King's legacy on the nation and his impact on modern American politics, over four decades after his death.

The first is his (above) speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence," delivered at Riverside Church one year to the day prior to King's assassination in Memphis.

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For 37 years, Columbia University historian Ken Jackson has taught a session of his class, "The History of the City of New York," in an unforgettable fashion -- namely, on an all-night bike ride, which comes with the special added benefit of ensuring that none of the students fall asleep while being taught history. Columbia has released the video above of Jackson and some of his students talking about the ride, which starts at about 11 p.m. from Columbia and goes through Central Park, Times Square, Madison Square, Gramercy Park, Greenwich Village, Battery Park, Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Brooklyn Heights, with a "history of New York City's people and places" taught during stops via megaphone.

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via Wikipedia

According to a new book of interviews with Jacqueline Kennedy, the former First Lady said that her husband openly doubted Lyndon Johnson's ability to be president. The interviews, which were conducted by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the year following JFK's assassination, revealed "her husband even discussed ways to prevent Johnson from winning the Democratic nomination in a future contest."

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The U.S. Postal Service has recently gotten into Facebook and social media and stuff, in an effort to "reach broader, more diverse audiences," and also, perhaps, because they are kind of broke, and now they're releasing an array of new stamps, previewable by those means. One of these new Earthscapes stamps should be of particular interest to New Yorkers because, instead of representing glaciers and icebergs and volcanic craters and cranberry harvests (not that those things aren't awesome), it is of skyscraper apartments, the very sort of thing some of us live in.

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